


darling, your head's not right

by yotsu8a



Series: extensions [4]
Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Established Relationship, Late Night Conversations, M/M, idk what to tag this as lmao, mostly just eiichi thinking abt Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 20:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yotsu8a/pseuds/yotsu8a
Summary: Most people, he knows, see Shimura as tired, faded, nervous without enough energy to become outwardly paranoid; Takahashi sees him as someone who dragged himself out of a tragedy and still gets up every day and kisses him on the cheek and says, “Good morning, Eiichi,” like he isn’t wasting the life he was so lucky to escape with by loving him.





	darling, your head's not right

**Author's Note:**

> i don't think there are even any warnings for this fic. like, death is sorta kinda referenced and so is sex but it's literally so vague. this is just soft and gay and sorta sad. takes place, like, two and a half years after out / in / on. shim and eiichi are dating now.

Weekend nights in the Shimura-Takahashi household vary in eventfulness. Haru is with her mother and so they are at liberty to spend their time as they please, be it with Mido or engaged in some desperate intimacies or completely absorbed in their own silence, because that is what you _do_ once you’ve settled into a home — you spend your time as you please. They have had a few years now to get used to it — a few years to get used to a lot of things.

Tonight is particularly uneventful. It is Saturday, but only just barely; they had all been exhausted this week and had retired for the time being without discussion or debate. That was good. Takahashi does not like discussion, and he cannot stand debate. The house remains quiet, then, and not entirely enveloped in darkness. There is always at least one light on in the house at all times as a sort of unspoken rule (more of a promise); tonight there is one at the end of the hallway, one in the guest bathroom, and one in the living room — a single, nondescript lamp that Shimura had brought from his old house, its beams gentle and yellow and just a bit dimmer than the room’s other fixtures. Takahashi had switched it on, now in the past by only a handful of minutes.

On the many occasions where Shimura tears himself awake in the middle of the night, it takes only a moment of consideration to figure out what the issue is, which is greatly to Takahashi’s benefit since he doesn't trust himself enough to _guess_. When Shimura finds himself painfully conscious in the coils of early morning he retches, he sobs, he doubles over and scoops the guilt from his body in clots. Takahashi knows _why_ , through Shimura’s forced explanations and through years of experience; he knows that there is not a day that goes by where Shimura isn’t crushed underneath the force of his own guilt and shame, knows that Shimura will probably never stop seeing Hatori’s face in his dreams. 

For Takahashi, however, it is not so simple. God knows that he has issues of his own — he has them in abundance, they grow from him like weeds, he is too quiet but talks too much and never thinks when he does and he is cowardly and overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly _stupid_ and someone like that is bound to have insecurities by the dozens — but it is simply _different_. He is not like Shimura; when he wakes up ill and shaking and full of dread it is not because of any dream he can remember, not because of any old, damned friend haunting his eyelids. There is something wrong, but he can never put his finger on _what_ ; he knows there is _plenty_ wrong, plenty of things for him to be anxious about, plenty of things inside himself to despise, but it never feels like _enough_. No explanation for these sentiments ever seems big enough; they come out of nowhere and they could be anywhere but that doesn’t mean he can _tell_. He grasps an issue, a possible explanation, only to discover that whatever is making him feel this way _must_ be a good deal worse. He hates himself without remembering why; he dreads the world without knowing which part.

It’s omnipresent, but typically in the background, a low, droning musical score written by some spiteful composer. Every so often it worsens into a _screech_ , the amplified sound of nails on chalkboard — and _that_ is when he can’t sleep. 

Night is kinder to him, usually, than it is to Shimura — once every month versus a couple of times a week — but the moon has tossed its coin tonight and decided to be cruel. He is awake and Shimura is not and the idea of rousing the other man on one of his better nights seems a reprehensible crime to Takahashi. He remains alone, then, in the living room, thumb sliding slowly, repetitively over the palm of his other hand. The television remains off, for the sake of volume; he contemplates retrieving a book from across the room, but cannot trust himself to do so silently. The tip of one thumb meets the base of another. He will wait out his misgivings or the night itself, whichever disappears first.

That had been his _intention_ , at least, but then the stair light switches on and he’s greeted with the sound of feet creaking down the wooden steps into the living room.

Takahashi turns guiltily towards the source of the sound and is greeted by Shimura, just reaching the bottom of the steps and as radiant as ever. _Radiant_ in a very particular sense of the word; Shimura does not dazzle and amaze, but he glows softly. He is purposefully unassuming, carefully inoffensive, but he is warm and inviting and has a look in his eyes that says that he was afraid, endlessly afraid once, and he knows that everyone else was too and he can’t forgive himself but he does forgive Takahashi. He is not fluorescent, but he is bright in a way that is easy to look at. His choice for nightclothes is a t-shirt and shorts, well-fitting enough to show the way his muscles move underneath them; the light catches in his hair enough for Takahashi to see the gray almost unnoticeably creeping its way out from his scalp into black.

Most people, he knows, see Shimura as tired, faded, nervous without enough energy to become outwardly _paranoid_ ; Takahashi sees him as someone who dragged himself out of a tragedy and still gets up every day and kisses him on the cheek and says, “Good morning, Eiichi,” like he isn’t wasting the life he was so lucky to escape with by loving him.

“You’re up late,” he comments; it’s an obvious observation, but Takahashi can hear what’s behind it.

Takahashi hums and shrinks away into the couch cushion despite the sympathy in his boyfriend’s tone. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It isn’t your fault. A gust of wind wakes me up.” Shimura smiles as he says it, magnanimous and inviting. Takahashi recognizes, dully, that it’s an attempt to cheer him up and tries to smile back, but it just makes him feel _tired_. 

Shimura seats himself next to him, then, movements slurred with drowsiness. Their thighs are touching and Takahashi does not move away; after a moment, Shimura takes Takahashi’s hands into his own, and the gesture feels so tender despite its small size that, at first, neither of them speak.

“What’s wrong?” Shimura asks, finally.

Takahashi shrugs. “Nothing,” he says, but he really means to say, “I don’t know.”

Another one of Shimura’s virtues is that he _understands_ — he can hear the meaning behind any word, see the face behind any mask, feel the muscles as they shift and pulse underneath any area of skin. Nothing and no one can hide from him but he is not _forceful_ , not with Takahashi; he empathizes gently and lovingly, and speaking to him, even with the most sparing of words, feelsto Takahashi like he is baring his soul and being told that it is lovely. Shimura hears what he didn’t say, and that knowledge alone helps even _without_ a response.

Which is good, because Shimura takes a moment to respond. His hands press against Takahashi’s and his lashes brush over his skin and finally he says, “Is there anything I can do to help? Can I get you anything?”

_Just stay here_ , Takahashi thinks — immensely selfishly, he’s sure. Instead, he shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

Shimura pauses like he’s thinking that over and his eyes scan over Takahashi’s face a few times in the yellow glow; then he slides against him in a fluid motion and places his arms firmly around his torso. He’s in Takahashi’s lap now but there is no double meaning to it; his fingers trace circles over the other man’s back and Takahashi pushes his face into the crook of Shimura’s neck. It is safe there. 

_You don’t deserve to be sad_ , he thinks and wishes he could find it in him to say it. _You sat here, didn’t you? You sat right on this couch three years ago with Hatori and listened to him cry his last tears. How do you manage it? Why do you_ have _to manage it? The world should let you rest. It should let you feel happy, for once._

Shimura pulls back and looks him in the eye and he can feel, again, that what he’s thinking is _understood_. He knows that Shimura will never agree with him but at least he doesn’t offer resistance, either — he just cups Takahashi’s cheeks in his hands and closes his eyes and kisses him.

When they pull away, it’s Shimura who speaks first.

“It’s late. Let’s get back to bed.”

“Yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> the title is taken from 'someday' by the strokes, which is my biggest takamura song lmao
> 
> http://sugurushimura.tumblr.com/


End file.
